At least 11 advertisers now boycotting Ingraham’s show despite apology to David Hogg

AllahpunditPosted at 4:01 pm on March 30, 2018

This will end ironically when Fox drops Ingraham at 10 and replaces her with Tomi Lahren, who’s twice as eager to provoke as Ingraham is.

The latest to go is Office Depot, which wasn’t named in the list of 12 companies Hogg tweeted out last night as “top advertisers” on her show. It makes sense that companies that advertise less frequently would be quicker to cut the cord. Although he’s doing well with the major advertisers too:

Per the Hill, the complete list as of 3 p.m. ET is Hulu, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, Office Depot, Jenny Craig, Stitch Fix, Wayfair, TripAdvisor, Expedia, the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort, and Nutrish. Dozens of companies haven’t commented but, to my knowledge, none has committed to sticking with her. I wonder what the fallout would be if one issued a split-the-difference statement saying that it thought Ingraham was boorish for taunting him over his college prospects but it also believes in forgiveness when remorse has been expressed, which it has in this case. That would put Hogg in the position of having to double down on pettiness in refusing to accept her apology. Who’s going to drop AT&T, say, if they decide that she was wrong but she’s learned her lesson and everyone should move on?

Elsewhere in “media types having bad days engaging with Parkland kids” news:

WAIT! @KyleKashuv. I apologize. I thought you were someone else who keeps challenging me to a debate with insults. I probably have in the past. This is the first tweet where I know who you are. Nothing else I said is relevant.

I owe an apology to @KyleKashuv. I have no idea how many times I have commented to him. There is a high school kid who has a podcast who keeps challenging me to debates with insults. I mixed up their names. Please ignore every tweet Ive sent. They were written for someone else.

Eichenwald was squabbling with some kid over guns, confused him with pro-gun Stoneman Douglas student Kyle Kashuv, and now here we are. I’m optimistic that the rules for debating with and about the Parkland kids can get even stupider before the weekend is over, but the bar has been set high.

I wonder if Fox has anything in the works to solve its boycott problem with the left. As I said this morning, it was savvy of Hogg to seize on Ingraham’s college taunt as a pretext for a boycott because liberals are *always* looking for a pretext to boycott Fox. A boycott hurt Glenn Beck years ago when he was at the network and helped drive Bill O’Reilly from the air last year. Now Ingraham’s lost more than 10 advertisers despite apologizing. There are things the network could do to insulate themselves a bit from that pressure but they all have problems. The most radical option would be to go to a subscription-only model, but they’d lose their perch as the highest-rated news network overnight if they did that. As loyal as their audience is, not everyone who watches now would pay for the privilege of watching FNC.

They could also try to use their unmatched sway over red-state America by organizing counter-boycotts, just to show the corporate class that they’re prepared to hit back the next time their advertisers consider bowing to left-wing pressure. Imagine if Ingraham, Hannity, and Carlson all used their shows to call publicly for boycotts of the company that have withdrawn ads from Ingraham’s show. But they’d risk alienating major corporate entities by doing that. If you’re a CEO whose company is at risk of being boycotted by the left for advertising on Fox and counter-boycotted by the right for dropping ads from Fox, the smart play is to not advertise on Fox in the first place, right?

Still, there must be a way for FNC to monetize viewer outrage that Ingraham’s being targeted despite her apology. Literally no one believes that this is about her taunting Hogg now, even if it was in the beginning. She’s a target of opportunity, a right-wing media figure who’s being muscled pour encourager les autres. If the network directly asked viewers to donate to make up the shortfall in revenue, as pitiful as that would be, fans would probably do it. There must be a less pitiful way to make that pitch.